Oath Bound

by Rachel Vincent

  “Honestly, your guess is as good as mine,” a man’s voice said, and I stopped in my tracks. Either she’d actually found someone, or the other half of her split personality was decidedly unfeminine.

  “You can call me Sera,” she said as I pushed that last door open, my pulse rushing so loud in my ears that it threatened to drown out her soft words. How close was she to getting shot? Why wasn’t she dead already? Was it true that he couldn’t kill her—whoever he was—and if so, why not?

  “What else?” Sera said as I stared at a vaguely person-shaped outline in the last shadowy office between me and the bathroom. “Can you lie? That’s a stupid question, isn’t it? Even if you say no, how do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I can lie, unless you tell me not to,” the man said as I aimed my gun at the person-shaped shadow. It didn’t move, so I pulled a penlight from my left pocket and flinched when the power button clicked beneath my thumb. But neither Sera nor the man with her heard, and the shadow turned out to be a custodian’s uniform hung on the top handle of a filing cabinet.

  “Okay, then, let’s try this out. Are you here alone?”

  “No,” he said. “My partner took the other wing.”

  “Just one man?” Sera paused as I snuck back across the hall, and I had the feeling she was considering. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

  I’d come to the same conclusion. Kori and Ian could dispatch a lone gunman in their sleep. What I couldn’t figure out was why Sera was still alive.

  “Okay. I suspect our privacy is nearing its end. Tell me where they put Kenley Daniels, and I’ll let you go. You have my word.”

  “Like you let Ned go?” At the mention of the dead man, I glanced at him, still propped up across from the bathroom, less than a foot from me now. “You can see how well that worked out for him.”

  I could see the speaker by then, through the crack where the bathroom door hadn’t quite closed. He was tall and fair-skinned. Reasonably thick, like most of Tower’s musclemen. But he had to be Skilled, to have gotten into a warehouse locked from the inside. Had he come through the bathroom, after we’d left it? Was that why she’d turned the lights on? To keep a Traveler from escaping?

  But that made no sense, because he still had his gun, which should have meant he was the one in power. Yet his gun was aimed at the floor, and he showed no more inclination to use it than she showed fear of it.

  “That wasn’t my fault. I set him free,” Sera insisted, and on the wall, the shadow of her hand pushed back the shadow of her hair, hanging over her silhouette.

  “Which is exactly what got him killed,” the man insisted. “You broke his binding, and she has no use for those she can’t control.”

  She? Julia? How the hell could Sera have broken Ned’s binding?

  That was the last unanswered question I could take. I shoved the door open and aimed at the man’s head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Sera gasped, and the man swung his gun up in my direction.

  “Stop!” Sera shouted, and he took his finger off the trigger. “Put your gun down. In fact, give me the damn thing!”

  To my absolute shock, Julia Tower’s muscleman clicked the safety switch on, then handed his pistol to her by its grip.

  Sera held it with the caution of someone who’s never pulled a trigger in her life. But to her credit, she didn’t set it in the sink behind her or drop it in the toilet to her left. Though she might have ejected the clip, if she’d known how.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, still aiming at the man’s head. “How did you break Ned’s bindings?”

  “Kris, stand down,” Sera said. “Mitch isn’t going to hurt anyone. Are you?” She glanced at the man with one brow raised, and Mitch shrugged.

  “That’s up to you.”

  She frowned. “Well, then...don’t hurt anyone.”

  “Ever?” He stared back at her in challenge and seemed to enjoy her moment of confusion. “Even if someone tries to kill you, you want me to just stand there and let it happen, if the alternative is hurting him?”

  “Of course not.” Sera glanced at me, then her tense focus slid to my gun before she turned back to Mitch. “Just...don’t hurt anyone until I say otherwise. Okay?”

  That time a shrug was his only reply.

  “Sera, what the fuck?” I demanded. “How did you break Ned’s bindings? You’re a Binder now? How many Skills to you have?”

  “Just the one. Er...two, I guess. But I’m not a Binder.”

  “You have two Skills?” Mitch said, and Sera’s forehead furrowed in sudden concern.

  “You can’t tell anyone that. Ever,” she said, and he scowled, then rubbed his own forehead, like he was getting a headache. Or thinking about breaching an oath.

  “Why is he taking orders from you?” I demanded. “Why hasn’t he shot you? How did you break Ned’s binding?”

  “While we’re asking questions, why was this fucker sneaking up on us?” Kori said from behind me, and I spun to find her in the hall, gesturing to Ian, who had an obviously dead man tossed over his good shoulder, dripping blood on the floor at his back. “How did you get in?”

  “The lights are on a remote,” Mitch said. “When our Tracker hadn’t picked up your signal after an hour, we turned this one off and popped in to check. Since you’re obviously here, the only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that your psychic signal is being jammed. Any idea how that might happen?” He was looking at Sera, but she only stared back at him, refusing to confirm either of her Skills.

  “Mitch. It’s been a while.” Kori eyed him and I realized they’d once been coworkers. Had she known Ned, too?

  “Hey, Kori,” Mitch said as if they’d just bumped into each other at the watercooler. “Listen, there’s a pool going, and I’ve got five hundred bucks riding on you gettin’ shot in the head, so when the time comes, could you do me a favor and hold still?”

  “You placed a bet on how she’d die?” Sera looked horrified, but Kori only shrugged.

  “That bet never pays out. You’d think they’d eventually learn.”

  “I feel like I’ve missed something.” Ian winced as he lowered the body to the ground and propped it up next to Ned. “What’s going on?”

  “Kori’s evidently having a mobster’s reunion, and this asshole’s taking orders from Sera and blaming her for getting Ned killed. Also, he may know where Kenley is.”

  “Where is she?” Kori dismissed everything else as unimportant. Sometimes I admired her single-minded focus. Other times, it drove me nuts. I couldn’t decide which kind of time this should be.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No lies, Mitch,” Sera said, and he turned to glare at her.

  “I’m not lying. After what happened to Ned, do you think Julia’s likely to hand out classified information to every peon with a gun?”

  “Speaking of guns, why haven’t you used yours?” I glanced pointedly at his pistol, still in Sera’s unsure grip. “And why are you taking orders from her?”

  He deferred to Sera with a single glance and she cleared her throat nervously. “I...um...might have...inherited his binding. Kind of.”

  “You kind of inherited his binding?” Ian’s voice echoed my own confusion.

  “From Julia?” Kori frowned. “Does that mean she’s dead?”

  They were all missing the most obvious piece of the puzzle—how Sera could have inherited anything from Julia Tower—but she answered before I could ask.

  “Not that I know of.” Sera cleared her throat again and her hand clenched the edge of the grimy pedestal-style sink she leaned against. “I didn’t inherit from Julia. If I understand correctly, the bindings were never really hers in the first place. I inherited from Jake.”

  “Wait, bindings? Plural?” Ian�
�s hand hovered over the butt of his holstered weapon, as if it was the only thing he was really sure of at the moment. I knew exactly how that felt. “Not just this one?”

  “It’s...all of them.” Sera shrugged again, and her obvious confusion said she didn’t understand much more than we did. “Kind of.”

  “Kind of?” Kori frowned.

  “Julia still holds most of them. For the moment.”

  “How?” I lowered my aim—my arm was aching—but not my guard. “How the hell could you inherit anything from Jake Tower?” But as soon as I’d asked the question, the answer seemed obvious, and for the second it took to sink in, the world seemed to grind to a halt all around me.

  “Holy shit!” Kori actually staggered backward and stepped on Ian’s foot. “He’s your dad. Jake Tower was your fucking dad.”

  “No...” I said, but no one was listening. I’d heard it. I understood it. But I couldn’t make sense of it. Sera was beautiful, and smart, and she loved and missed her family more than anything else in the world. She couldn’t even be related to Jake Tower, much less sired by him, because the Towers were a nest of snakes willing to bite one another’s heads off if that’s what it took to climb to the top of the heap.

  And every time one of us had said something along those lines—that Tower’s family tree was rotten to its core—we’d inadvertently been insulting Sera. Implying that she was rotten, as well, by virtue of a shared root system.

  No wonder she couldn’t trust us with her secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hated us.

  “He was my father,” Sera corrected Kori, and I noted that Mitch didn’t look surprised. “He was never my dad. I never even met him, but after hearing about him from you guys, I can honestly swear to you that I’m nothing like him. Nothing like him.”

  Her tense tone and wide eyes seemed to be hinting at something beyond her actual words—something she evidently didn’t want Mitch to hear—but it wasn’t until she glanced at my gun again that I understood.

  She thought I was going to shoot her, if not right then and there, then eventually. She truly thought my hatred of all things Tower extended to her.

  I flipped the safety switch on my pistol, and she exhaled softly in relief. But her frame remained stiff and her focus kept flitting between me, Kori and Ian as she spoke. She was on alert.

  She didn’t trust us.

  “I don’t think Jake even knew I existed,” Sera continued.

  “He didn’t.” Kori looked stunned. Astonished. Her mind had been blown. “There’s no way in hell that he would have let anyone else raise you if he’d known you existed. Even if there was no emotional attachment whatsoever, you’re too valuable an asset to be wandering around out there, unprotected and uninstalled in the Tower machine.” She glanced at the ground, then up at Sera again, her eyes even wider now. “This kind of makes sense. Kinda. I mean, it’s crazy, but in a totally logical way.”

  “Not following you, Kor...” I said, and I obviously wasn’t the only one.

  My sister rolled her eyes at me. “Jake Tower was a Jammer.”

  Mitch’s eyes widened. “That’s classified information.”

  Kori shrugged. “It was. When he was alive and I was bound to him. Neither of which still applies.”

  “But Tower hired Jammers,” I pointed out. “Anne said he hired one of the best in the country as his kids’ nanny.” So they couldn’t be tracked and targeted by his enemies, which were numerous.

  “Camouflage,” Kori said. “That, and a backup system, for when he’s not home. His theory was that the less people know about you, the less vulnerable you are. It works the same with names, obviously.”

  “What’s your other skill?” Mitch asked Sera, as if they were the only two in the room. No one answered.

  “We need to get out of here. When Julia’s Trackers realize they can’t pick up Mitch and his partner, they’ll be on us like flies on a corpse.”

  Yet even with Mitch nominally under Sera’s control, I didn’t trust him, and I certainly wasn’t going to take him with us to one of our usual meeting places, so he could later report to Julia, either under orders—if he was somehow faking loyalty to Sera—or for pay. But we couldn’t leave him there; we weren’t done with him yet.

  There was so much Sera still didn’t understand...

  “Ideas?” Ian glanced at each of us, but Sera didn’t know the city, I’d spent very little time there myself, and Kori seemed reluctant to say whatever she was thinking aloud, where Mitch would hear her. Finally, she leaned toward Ian and stood on her toes to whisper into his ear.

  When she dropped onto the balls of her feet again he met her gaze with his brows raised. “Seriously?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Before I could ask what the hell they were talking about, Ian shrugged, and Kori turned to me, then motioned for me to bend so she could whisper into my ear. She gave me an address, but it took me a second to realize why Ian was surprised by it. We were going to the east side. Cavazos’s territory.

  “Can you find the place?” Kori said before I could ask the questions ready to tumble from my tongue.

  I nodded. “But what about—”

  “Just try to keep it quiet,” she interrupted, before I could finish my question. “With Sera there to jam us, no one will know we’re there, unless you announce it.”

  Sera looked bewildered, but obviously understood that we couldn’t give her an explanation in front of Mitch.

  I pushed my sleeve up and laid her hand on my right arm, so that her fingers touched my skin. I really wanted to hold her hand, but it wasn’t the time. Or the place. Or more than remotely likely to happen. Then I clicked off the safety on my gun, and though it felt strange to be touching both Sera and a weapon at the same time, I aimed right-handed at Mitch and pinned him with a scowl. “You so much as twitch on the way and I’ll blow a hole right through you.”

  Before he could answer, I grabbed his wrist, touching as little of his flesh as possible, and nodded at Ian, who turned off the lights. I tugged both Sera and Mitch forward before either of them could object or ask anything, and a couple of steps later our shoes landed on thick carpet.

  Even the sound of our breathing was different in this new room, muffled by carpet and furniture I could hardly make out in the darkness.

  I let go of Mitch as soon as I was sure we were in the right place, but Sera’s hand didn’t leave my arm as I tugged her to the side—out of Kori’s path—and I made no move to disengage from her hand.

  A second later, the quality of the air changed and two new, connected shadows stepped out of the greater darkness, their shoes whispering against the carpet. “Kris?” Kori said.

  “Yeah.” Sera started to let go of my arm, but I put my free hand over hers and squeezed, a silent comfort in the dark.

  “There’s a light switch between the door and the window. To your left.”

  I turned and made out the rectangle of pale light outlining a drape-covered window, then felt on the wall for a switch. My fingers found it and flipped the switch on, and light flooded the room to reveal a small but expensively furnished apartment around us.

  “Where are we?” Sera’s gaze hardly skirted Mitch as she took in our surroundings.

  “One of Ruben Cavazos’s apartments on the east side,” Kori said. “It was supposed to be his love-shack for Liv, but she never gave it up. To him, anyway.”

  The rest of us objected all at once.

  “Shh!” She glanced at the walls. “You want the neighbors to hear?”

  “Kori, this won’t work,” Ian said, practically tearing the words from my own tongue. “This is suicide.”

  “Bullshit. It’s perfect. Cavazos has no idea we’re here, and Julia would never think to look on the east side. And she can’t track us, as long as we have Sera.”
Her hard gaze took in Mitch’s astonished face, then slid to Sera. “Tell him never to mention this.”

  Sera let go of my arm and caught Mitch’s gaze. “Don’t ever mention this apartment to anyone. Or tell anyone we were on the east side,” she added as an afterthought.

  Mitch nodded, his jaw clenched in anger. Or frustration. Or both.

  “Okay.” I glanced around the apartment, taking in the galley-style kitchen, open dining area and hallway presumably leading to a bedroom and bathroom. “This will work, for the next half hour, at least.” It was better than getting caught and slaughtered at Julia’s warehouse.

  I caught Mitch’s attention and pointed at the table, which only had four chairs. “Sit. In the corner, where we can all see you.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, silently refusing to move until Sera rolled her eyes and said, “Do it.”

  Mitch mumbled something angry and profane, but took the seat I’d pointed out. I sat in the chair across from him and pulled another one out next to mine for Sera. Ian took the fourth chair while Kori dug around for something in the kitchen.

  “Okay. So you’re Jake Tower’s biological daughter,” Ian said, picking up the discussion almost exactly where we’d left it in the warehouse.

  Sera set Mitch’s gun on the table, out of his immediate reach and picked at the fingernails of her left hand. “According to Julia, I’m his bastard.”

  He gave her an infectious grin. “That means little, coming from a world-class bitch.”

  Sera smiled, but I couldn’t really enjoy the sight because my mind had already kicked into overdrive. “That’s how you got in to see her,” I said, thinking aloud, and Sera practically squirmed with discomfort. “You’re family.”

  “Of the illegitimate, publicly embarrassing sort, yes.”

  Kori closed one cabinet door and moved on to inspect the contents of the next. “That’s the best kind of family.”

  I ignored the grin she shot me.

  “No, the best kind of family is the kind you can count on.” Sera frowned. “My mistake was hoping that Lia would help me, just because we share the same blood.”